Strengthening ’s Border, Undermining Slavery: Fugitive Slaves and the Legal Regulation of Black Mississippi River Crossing, 1804–1860

BY JESSE NASTA

16 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 In 1873, formerly enslaved St. Louisan James master’s consent, or of the passenger’s free status, P. Thomas applied for a United States passport. persisted until the Civil War.3 After collecting the passport at his attorney’s office, Yet, while the text of the statute Thomas hurried home “to take a look at it” because remained fairly constant, its meaning changed over he had “never expected to see” his name on such a the six tumultuous decades between the document. He marveled that this government-issued Purchase and the Civil War because virtually passport gave him “the right to travel where he everything else in this border region changed. The choose [sic] and under the protection of the American former Northwest Territory, particularly , flag.” As Thomas recalled in his 1903 autobiography, was by no means an automatic destination for those he spent “most of the night trying to realize the great escaping slavery. For at least four decades after the change that time had wrought.” As a free African Northwest Ordinance of 1787 nominally banned American in 1850s St. Louis, he had been able to slavery from this territory, the enslavement and cross the Mississippi River to Illinois only when trafficking of persisted there. “known to the officers of the boat” or if “two or three Although some slaves risked escape to Illinois, reliable citizens made the ferry company feel they enslaved African Americans also escaped from this were taking no risk in carrying me into a free state.”1 “free” jurisdiction, at least until the 1830s, as a result. Thomas wrote no more on this subject. To him, and Others avoided Illinois entirely, seeking sanctuary in to many subsequent historians, no further explanation the emerging urban Mississippi and river ports was needed. St. Louis was in a slave state, Illinois south of the former Northwest Territory. was a free state, and the Mississippi River divided But then, during the 1820s and increasingly them. during the 1830s, the rise of steamboats and St. Yet what Thomas experienced as a heavily Louis’ resulting transformation into a western river policed river border by the eve of the Civil War metropolis, a boom in the city’s free and enslaved had not emerged automatically. Rather, decades of black population, the emergence of the underground confrontation, improvisation, and interplay between railroad in Illinois, and the resulting rise in slave law and the everyday realities of African American escapes to what was gradually becoming seen as free border crossing gradually infused this geographic soil, all converged to change the cultural context border with legal meaning. By crossing the river as within which people interpreted and experienced fugitives from slavery, as self-hired slaves, and as the black-letter laws. While Missouri statute had free black workers of ambiguous legal status, mobile outlawed the transporting of “slaves” across the African Americans sparked the legal conflicts and Mississippi River without a pass since 1804, it legal changes that gradually constructed this border, became increasingly difficult for steamboat owners giving rise to the legal “risk” that steamboat and ferry and crew to differentiate among self-hired slaves, owners and crew assumed when carrying African fugitive slaves, and free African Americans. In Americans like Thomas across the Mississippi River. many cases, all of these groups carried documents The basic consistency in Missouri statute purporting to authorize their mobility, whether has masked the profound changes in how people passes from masters or free papers, some authentic experienced, and in turn shaped, the legal regulation and others forged. Increasingly during the 1830s of black border crossing during the six decades and 1840s, Missouri judges responded by holding between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War.2 steamboat owners and crew strictly liable for slave As early as 1804, one year after the Louisiana escapes, even if they believed the escaped slave was Purchase, the territorial legislature laid down a free when they transported them or if central rule: no master of any vessel could transport stowed away. In doing so, Missouri courts shifted the any slave out of the Upper Louisiana Territory, which financial risk posed by slave escapes from masters became the Missouri Territory in 1812, without his or to common carriers, incentivizing steamboat and her master’s permission. Despite periodic revisions, ferry owners and operators to scrutinize all people this prohibition against carrying African Americans of African descent as suspected fugitive slaves across the Mississippi River without proof of a until proven otherwise. Although lawmakers and

Top left – Slaves being transported in groups were often chained together, as portrayed here in Henry Bibb’s Narrative, published at mid-century. (Image: Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself, New York, 1849)

Bottom left – Steamboats transformed St. Louis into a thriving commercial center, with more than 200 steamboats arriving each year. This scene is the site of today’s Gateway Arch. (Image: Library of Congress)

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 17 William Wells Brown (c. 1814–1884) was a former slave and the first African American novelist in the United States. While in St. Louis, Brown’s owners routinely rented him out to steamboat operators. Brown’s first escape attempt, portrayed here in his Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, was not successful, but his second escape in 1834—via steamboat to Cincinnati— was. (Image: Library of Congress) “consent or permission.” More fundamentally, the Amos Stoddard (1762–1813) was military commander text of this law used the terms “servant,” “negro or at St. Louis between the cession of Louisiana to the United mulatto,” and “slave” interchangeably, leaving it up States and early October of 1804, and represented the to those along slavery’s border to define and give United States at the “three flags ceremony” in St. Louis in substance to these categories.4 March 1804. (Image: Thepublici.blogspot.com) The small size of pre-statehood Missouri’s free black population is likely one reason lawmakers judges never managed to stop enslaved people placed little emphasis on distinguishing fugitive from escaping, these legal transformations made slaves from “free negroes and mulattoes,” and the Mississippi River an increasingly sealed and policing them as such. In 1804, Amos Stoddard, scrutinized border between slavery and freedom. governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, estimated that a quarter of St. Louis’ three to four hundred Before, and Beyond, Sectionalism: African Americans were free, totaling only 75 to The Multiple Paths of Fugitive Slaves, 100 persons.5 Yet St. Louis’ free black population 1787–Early 1820s only increased to 196 by 1820, compared to the city’s 1,810 slaves.6 Indeed, how small “the number Although the territorial legislature in what of free blacks and mulattoes was in comparison became Missouri moved to prevent slave escapes to the whole population” particularly struck the immediately after the Louisiana Purchase, the Reverend John Mason Peck when he migrated to St. vagueness of the statute that they passed in 1804 Louis in 1817.7 Throughout Missouri, the free black suggests that lawmakers did not yet consider black population also remained small, even relative to the movement between Missouri and the Northwest still-low white and enslaved populations. In 1810, Territory to pose a legal crisis. Adopted just one Missouri’s free black population reached only 605, year after the Louisiana Purchase, the law forbade compared with 2,875 slaves and 16,303 whites, or masters of any vessel from transporting any “servant three percent of the population.8 During this early whatsoever, or any negro or mulatto, or other slave” period, officials could therefore assume that the vast out of the Upper Louisiana Territory without the majority of African Americans in St. Louis and on the master’s “consent or permission.” Although the Mississippi River were slaves, a situation that would statute reflected lawmakers’ desire for some type change drastically during the 1840s and 1850s, when of regulation for transporting slaves across the St. Louis’s free black population came to outnumber Mississippi River, the text of the law provided only the city’s slaves, making it increasingly difficult for the barest guidelines for making this a reality. The officials to distinguish among the enslaved, the free, statute provided no guidance as to what constituted and fugitive slaves.9

18 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 The fact that Missouri and the Northwest for fugitives from nearby “slave states.” Missouri Territory initially shared a legal culture of lawmakers could view those across the river as fellow slaveholding and fugitive slave recapture also slaveholders and fugitive slave catchers at least until explains why Missouri territorial lawmakers failed the 1820s, and even through the 1840s in southern to promulgate strict legal regulation of black border Illinois’s most proslavery counties.13 Revealingly, crossing. The territorial statutes of the in April 1819, four months after Illinois entered the Territory (from which the Illinois Territory divided Union as a nominally free state, a Kaskaskia, Illinois, in 1809) created a presumption of servitude for all newspaper announced a one-hundred-dollar reward African Americans and restrained their mobility. for “apprehending” the advertiser’s 22-year-old The 1803 “Law Concerning Servants” prohibited “negro man” Ezekiel. This young man had been held “any person” to “harbor or entertain” a servant not as a slave by, and escaped from, two consecutive having a certificate of freedom indicating that their masters within Illinois. His self-proclaimed master period of servitude had expired. The statute deemed who placed the advertisement, Isaac D. Wilcox, those without certificates of freedom “runaways,” stated that Ezekiel had “formerly belonged to” Field codifying the presumption that all African Americans Bradshaw, near Edwardsville, Illinois, and that in the Indiana Territory were either bound “servants Ezekiel “has some pretensions to freedom which or slaves” or “runaways” unless they produced have been encouraged by a certain petty Lawyer by documentation that their term of servitude, which the name of Pugh, who resides at Edwardsville. Pugh often exceeded their lifetime, had expired.10 After encouraged him to leave Edwardsville and run to splitting from the Indiana Territory in 1809, and even Kaskaskia, where he promised to follow and protect after entering the Union as a “free state” in 1818, him, which he did until I purchased him.” Wilcox Illinois continued to treat all African Americans as went on to state that, after buying Ezekiel, “I put him possible fugitives, either from long-term indentured in the possession of three men to take him home, servitude in Illinois or from chattel slavery in nearby from whom he escaped, and I presume he will try states.11 In 1819, the new state’s legislature replaced to get to Edwardsville to his [lawyer] protector.”14 “An Act Concerning Servants” with “An Act Underscoring the still widespread approval of such Respecting Free Negroes, Mulattoes, Servants and actions, these details were not forcibly evoked Slaves.” This statute, which remained in effect until through a legal trial. Instead, Wilcox felt confident the Civil War, deemed any “black or mulatto person” enough of his legal ability to purchase and hold without a “certificate of freedom” a “runaway slave Ezekiel as a slave in Illinois to advertise these facts in or servant” and authorized any inhabitant of Illinois a newspaper.15 to detain him or her as such.12 Tracing those who escaped slavery in this region, As a result of Illinois’s legal creation of with a particular focus on the geographic paths of African American bondage and the accompanying their escape, further illustrates how the Mississippi presumption of unfree status, the Northwest Territory and Ohio river borders against slavery remained remained a place of enslavement and trafficking unsettled and fluid well into the nineteenth century. of bound African Americans rather than a haven The escape routes of the region’s fugitive slaves demonstrate that Congress’s vision of ending slavery Notices regarding escaped slaves were not unusual, but north of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers did not escapes across the Mississippi to Illinois were sometimes always correspond with lived reality. Fugitive slave facilitated by both proximity to a slave state and the advertisements in early Illinois newspapers reveal presence of common carriers. (Image: Missouri History that the geography of slave escapes followed no clear Museum) northward, slave-to-free soil trajectory in the early national northwest. Because they show the choices that the enslaved made at the moment of escape, and the ways in which legal constraints on black freedom and geographic mobility in Illinois shaped those choices, these advertisements illuminate how African Americans in this border region actually experienced and engaged with federal and territorial law at the everyday level. In contrast to the more thoroughly studied eastern seaboard, however, fugitive slave ads from the early national and antebellum West have not been systematically studied.16 A recently published

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 19 Slaves were valuable, as suggested by ads such as this one offering a substantial reward for the return of four escaped slaves from St. Louis. (Image: Missouri History Museum)

collection of such newspaper advertisements, printed Squire to New Orleans, the runaway advertisement in southern Illinois between 1816 and the eve of the for him, unlike others, does not mention this motive Civil War by slaveholders, sheriffs, and jailers who for escape. It is therefore more likely that the city detained fugitive and alleged fugitive slaves, suggests itself attracted him. Similarly, in 1820, John Forrester both the frequency with which African Americans advertised that a young “Negro man, named Dick” escaped from bondage in Illinois, rather than to this escaped “down the river” to one of the “states or ‘free” jurisdiction, as well as the extent to which territories bordering on the Mississippi.”19 Other some fugitives escaped southward rather than risk slaveholders admitted that they did not know whether recapture in Illinois’s sometimes equally hostile legal a particular fugitive slave went north or south, climate.17 suggesting that the “free” Northwest Territory was The advertisements reveal that, especialy during by no means an automatic or obvious destination for the 1810s and 1820s, enslaved fugitives traveled those fleeing bondage. One Tennessee slaveholder not only up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to the advertised in 1816 that Bob, a “young negro fellow,” “free states” but also fled down these rivers, seeking would either head up the Ohio River to Pittsburgh or anonymity in emerging western port cities rather remain in Kentucky, his home before his most recent than relying on the tenuous legal promise of the sale.20 In the early 1820s, two slaveholders similarly Northwest Ordinance. When a 22-year-old “bright advertised either Illinois or Kentucky as speculated mulatto” brick layer named Squire escaped from destinations.21 Hopkinsville, Kentucky, his master speculated that he To be sure, the Northwest Ordinance induced “attempt[ed] to go down the river” to New Orleans, some slaves to flee northward during the first two “as he has done before.” Although a more than six decades of the nineteenth century. In 42 of the 200 hundred mile journey, Squire evidently believed that collected fugitive slave advertisements, slaveholders New Orleans offered safer refuge than the “free” either knew or speculated that those who escaped Illinois Territory, less than one hundred miles to the headed to states carved from the Northwest northwest.18 Although it is possible that lost kin drew Territory.22 At the same time, references to the “free

20 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 states” appear most frequently in advertisements St. Louis officials did more to return fugitives slaves placed far south of Illinois, and often in vague rather to Illinois.28 He closed with the threat that “if our than precise terms. One Alabama slaveholder, for negroes are to find refuge in your state you ought instance, stated that he was “inclined to think” that not to complain if we should refuse to take up, or those who escaped from his plantation “will push for authorize our citizens to take up yours.” Although those free states.”23 Another Alabama slaveholder Illinois ultimately tightened rather than repealed similarly “expected” that Peggy, a 22-year-old its fugitive slave laws, the Illinois governor’s “negro woman,” will “endeavor to reach some of the preoccupation with slaves escaping from Illinois states north of the Ohio.”24 As these slaveholders’ rather than to his state, including his own “female speculations suggest, the western “free states,” slave,” interrupts any assumption that the Mississippi particularly Illinois, appeared more “free” in deep River served as an undisputed barrier between slave southern slaveholders’ worried minds than in and free soil as long as four decades after Congress practice. passed the Northwest Ordinance.29 Indeed, zooming in on Illinois itself reveals Finally, Illinois laws aside, technological that a sizable minority of those mentioned in the limitations on upriver travel prior to the rise of the fugitive slave ads escaped bondage within Illinois, steamboat in the 1820s and 1830s posed a logistical rather than fleeing to the state. Of the 200 collected barrier against slave escapes to Illinois. The fugitive fugitive slave ads, 17 sought the recapture of African slave ads reveal that most of those who did flee to Americans who had escaped from Illinois masters. Illinois headed down the Ohio and Cumberland One of these masters, John Choisser, specifically Rivers, from Kentucky and a small section of invoked Illinois’s long-term indenture laws when northern Tennessee. In contrast, most slaves south advertising for his “negro man,” Barney. He insisted of the Mason-Dixon Line had no hope of traveling that Barney was “regularly indentured and bound upriver fast enough to avoid recapture. Some, such as to serve me agreeably to the constitution and laws 18-year-old Mason from St. Louis County, Missouri, of the state,” and “I wish to treat him as a servant and Clemmens and Lem from Obion, Tennessee, should be treated.”25 The other Illinois slaveholders, tried to escape upriver by canoe.30 But the fugitive however, simply advertised their property claims slave advertisement for Ben, a 40-year-old “negro in persons, without any justification. Robert Collet man” whose ears had been cut off “close to his head of Wood River, Illinois, for instance, stated matter- for robbing a boat on the Ohio River,” presumably of-factly that he had “purchased” Harry “3 months as part of an escape attempt, illustrates both the since at Harrisonville, [Illinois]” and offered a improbability of successfully escaping by non-steam “liberal reward” for “apprehending said runaway and powered boat as well as some slaveholders’ gruesome delivering him to the subscriber or confining him retaliations against those who tried.31 in the nearest jail.”26 Similarly, Robert D. M’Lean As we will see in the next section, however, offered a $25 reward for the recapture of his “negro the rise of immediate abolitionism throughout the man,” John, “if taken within the state.”27 That state U.S. North and West, Illinois’s increasingly anti- was “free” Illinois, not a bordering slave state. slavery legal and political culture, the rise of western Well into the 1820s, Illinoisans worried about river metropolises like St. Louis, and the steamboat those they held as slaves escaping to cities in revolution all converged to remake the borders neighboring slave states. Tellingly, in 1828, Illinois between African American slavery and freedom Governor Ninian Edwards wrote a private letter to along the western rivers. Moreover, by escaping St. Louis Mayor William Carr Lane about ensuring slavery in greater numbers, the enslaved played “harmony between” Illinois and Missouri regarding an even larger role in shaping and reshaping these fugitive slaves. Rather than highlight the issue of borders. enslaved Missourians escaping to Illinois, Edwards decried the “encouragement that our negroes have The Path of the Law: Creating received” from the city’s free African Americans to Slavery’s Border “run to St. Louis.” Writing not only as governor of Illinois but also as the self-proclaimed owner of a In most historiography, the Missouri “French female slave” who escaped from his home Compromise of 1820 represented the federal in Belleville, Illinois, to St. Louis with the free black government’s final act of border-making along Paul Vallad, a “certain fellow who claims her as his the northwestern frontier, ending a century-long wife,” Edwards threatened to repeal Illinois’s “very Mississippi River Valley rivalry between French, severe” law “against harbouring runaways” unless Spanish, British, Native American, and, finally,

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 21 Free blacks and slaves mingled in places like St. Louis along the riverfront, where both would have found work on steamboats, along the wharf, and in nearby warehouses. (Image: Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, Boston, 1857)

U.S. forces. Stephen Aron argues that, with the this statute did not mention steamboat owners or achievement of statehood in 1821, Missouri “shifted crew, only “any ferryman or other persons” convicted from being a frontier to having a frontier.”32 While of transporting a slave across the Mississippi River there is much truth in this, Missouri’s entrance into without a written pass, a fact which suggests that the Union also began a decades-long struggle to lawmakers did not yet interpret steamboats as a major constrain and control African American crossing threat to slave property.35 of the new state’s Mississippi River border. In the Yet the Missouri legislature was soon forced decades following the Missouri Compromise, those to recognize that, perhaps most importantly, the present along this border engaged in the contentious steamboat made escape up the Mississippi and Ohio process of defining and giving meaning to the rivers more feasible, gradually solidifying slaves’ Mississippi River border in law, in everyday life, and, escape routes in a northerly direction. Fugitive to use Walter Johnson’s term, in the “everyday life of slave advertisements published in Illinois reflect the law.”33 the swift and far-reaching effects of steamboats on At the time of the Missouri Compromise, how slave escapes. Two years after the first steamboat Missouri’s river border would be monitored to plied the western rivers in 1817, for example, Isham prevent slave escapes remained largely undefined and Dick escaped from Tennessee on a steamboat in law. In the early 1820s, at the same moment as it “ascended the Mississippi.”36 Steamboats even Congress supposedly demarcated and finalized connected the St. Louis border region with the Deep slavery’s western borders, the rise of steamboat South. As escaped slave William Anderson recounted travel allowed all people, including enslaved and free in his narrative, in the late 1820s he planned to steal African Americans, to traverse these borders quickly a skiff and float twenty miles downriver from his and sometimes undetectably. Yet Missouri’s fugitive plantation to Vicksburg, Mississippi, or to “get on slave laws still reflected a pre-steamboat world, and, a steamboat going up the river.” Only a few years therefore, remained drastically incomplete from the earlier, Anderson would have depended upon a perspective of those charged with policing Missouri’s southerly moving current to carry him to the nearest border against the emerging free states. Missouri’s city. Now the steamboat extended his potential 1822 “Act Concerning Slaves” made “any ferryman escape route hundreds of miles northward along or other persons” convicted of crossing “any slave the Mississippi River.37 Indeed, by 1829, twelve from the state across the Mississippi river” without a years after the first one arrived in St. Louis, the written pass “particularly directed to such ferryman, steamboat shortened travel between New Orleans and or other person” responsible for the full value of the Louisville from nine months to nine days.38 By the slave, “to be recovered by action on the case.”34 Yet 1840s, western river cities annually received several

22 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 thousand steamboats laden with passengers and by a number of scholars, joined the more than 20 cargo, with more than one hundred steamboats often “organized Black communities” in antebellum docked on St. Louis’s levee at a time.39 Between 1840 Illinois in sheltering and otherwise aiding fugitive and 1860, moreover, steamboat arrivals to St. Louis, slaves.48 Indeed, fugitive slaves’ accounts of the most important port in the Upper South, nearly fleeing through this region underscore free African doubled.40 Responding to this new reality, in 1835 the Americans’ primary role in forging the underground Missouri legislature amended state law to prohibit railroad.49 Upon reaching Illinois, for instance, explicitly “any master, commander, or owner of a fugitive slave John Brown remained “in safety” in a steam boat” from transporting any slave across the “settlement of colored people” for three weeks before Mississippi River without the master’s consent.41 continuing toward Canada.50 Indeed, the steamboat revolution, coupled with Missouri legislators and judges responded growing sectional division over slavery, created by further restricting black movement across the a boom in slave escapes and intensified legal Mississippi River. Because returning fugitive slaves regulation and legal conflict over black border from increasingly free Illinois became more difficult crossing during the 1830s and 1840s.42 In the 1830s, by the 1840s, lawmakers focused on preventing the the rise of abolitionism among some Illinoisans enslaved from crossing into that state in the first made slave escapes across the Mississippi River by place. Central to this process was the proliferation steamboat more feasible. By the late 1830s, a small of civil suits against common-carrier owners and but determined group of abolitionists was active operators who transported fugitive slaves across in Illinois. Although immediate abolitionism took the Mississippi River, whether intentionally or root slowly in the state, with only one abolitionist unwittingly. society in Illinois until 1836, the presence of abolitionists in this border state bolstered the escape Common Carriers, Case Law, and the efforts of Missouri slaves and enraged Missouri Consolidation of the Mississippi River slaveholders.43 St. Louis newspapers began to report Border abolitionist resistance to fugitive slave recapture in Illinois in the late 1830s, a movement that increased On the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, throughout the 1840s. The St. Louis Republican the mid-1830s marked a drastic solidification of reported that abolitionists in Will County, Illinois, the river border between slavery and freedom, “collected in strong force, and threatened violence” both politically and legally. The abolitionist mail against Benjamin Fowler, a St. Louis slaveholder, campaign of 1835 gave slaveholders throughout the “should he attempt to remove” his three slaves who United States a growing sense of being under attack had fled there one year earlier. As this newspaper by an organized, radical movement.51 In response, lamented, Fowler returned to Missouri without his St. Louis slaveholders held anti-abolitionist meetings escaped slaves.44 By 1845, the abolitionist New York that resolved to fortify restrictions on enslaved Emancipator proclaimed that “upwards of thirty” and free black movement, to guard against any slaves had escaped from the St. Louis “region” abolitionist presence in St. Louis, and to tighten during the previous two weeks alone, and that state slavery statutes. In turn, the events of 1835 “scarcely a day passes that some of these fleshy resulted in a more explicit Missouri slave code, riches do not take themselves legs and run away.”45 with statutes that removed the legal vagaries that Enough slaves escaped annually “through the State had marked border policing during the two previous of Illinois and finally find a secure place of refuge decades. The 1835 Missouri legislature particularly in Canada” that the Missouri General Assembly focused on preventing steamboat owners and crew petitioned Congress in 1847 to seek a treaty with from carrying slaves out of the state. As part of a Great Britain that would guarantee their return.46 revised, extensive legal code on “the introduction Even more than white abolitionists, the free black of slaves and police regulations concerning them,” communities that coalesced in Illinois by the 1830s the legislature authorized common law suits for aided escaping slaves. As the St. Louis Republican damages, in addition to a $150 fine, against “any stated with exasperation, the underground railroad’s master, commander or owner of a steam boat or “conductors are white men,” but the slaves’ escape other vessel” who “shall transport or carry away route is “laid with black rails.”47 Brooklyn, Illinois, any servant or slave, out of this state in such vessel” which freed and fugitive slaves established across without the master’s written permission. 52 At the the Mississippi River from St. Louis in 1830 and same time, the revised code kept in place the 1822 is considered the United States’ first all-black town statute that made “any ferryman or other person”

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 23 two years later. There, Dave switched clothing with another enslaved young man who then escaped, aware that slaveholders described fugitive slaves’ clothing in advertisements for their recapture. Hoping to be less recognizable in his new outfit, Dave remained on the steamboat when it returned to St. Louis and hired himself to travel upriver on its voyage the next day, presumably planning to make his final escape then. That is when Dave’s master, James Russell, recaptured him. Like many slaveholders, Russell retaliated by selling Dave. The steamboat’s stop in Illinois transformed the first mate’s action into the basis for a major Missouri Supreme Court case. On April 9, 1835, a few days after he recaptured and sold Dave, Russell sued James Taylor, captain of the Utility, because the steamboat’s first mate had carried his slave “across A common method of selling slaves was at auction, the Mississippi River without showing a pass or including those in downtown St. Louis. This one was other written form of permission,” a plea that evoked described by Henry Bibb in his Narrative. (Image: Narrative the 1835 statute. Russell, who owned 14 slaves by of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American 1840, was a prominent attorney who had sat on the Slave, Written by Himself, New York, 1849) St. Louis Grand Jury, the St. Louis County Court, 54 liable for the full value of any slave they transported and the Board of St. Louis Road Commissioners. out of state without the master’s written permission. Clearly familiar with the newly revised statute and In doing so, the Missouri legislature reaffirmed the determined to test the law’s benefits for slaveholders liability of anyone who carried a slave out of the state like himself, Russell sued the steamboat captain for without permission while also targeting steamboat Dave’s full $600 value plus “the value of the services owners and crew as a new category of persons of said slave” and the additional $400 “costs of 55 requiring strict legal surveillance, even if they reclaiming him.” unintentionally aided fugitive slaves by transporting The St. Louis Circuit Court’s opinion in Russell them. Before 1835, Missouri’s “Act to Provide v. Taylor shows that, initially, at least some judges for Apprehending and Securing Runaway Slaves” resisted legal efforts to hold common carriers defined as a runaway any slave found more than 20 liable for unintentionally helping slaves to escape. miles from the “plantation, lots, tenement, or other Although the plain meaning of the 1835 Missouri place where he or she is employed, or required to be” statute defined as a tort the very act of transporting without a “token or written pass.”53 But, with the rise any slave across the Mississippi River without his of steamboat travel, a short walk to the levee could or her master’s written permission, the jury and allow an enslaved person to flee hundreds of miles in judge of the St. Louis Circuit Court focused on just a few days. A 20-mile radius could not demarcate the defendant’s intent in carrying Dave aboard his their world. Missouri lawmakers recognized this steamboat, not even considering the question of heightened threat to slave property and targeted negligence. As Judge Luke Lawless insisted, the steamboats accordingly. statute existed only to punish those whose “object”

Russell v. Taylor (1837), the first fugitive slave was to help slaves escape. Taylor, the judge reasoned, suit against a common carrier to reach the Missouri had hired Dave “bona fide, as a working hand aboard Supreme Court, reflected and subsequently bolstered the steamboat.” The testimony made no mention of Missouri lawmakers’ effort to scrutinize all black the steamboat’s captain seeing Dave before the first border crossing. The case began with what had mate hired him, ruling out any intention on Taylor’s 56 become a routine act along the western rivers. On part to help him escape. Even during a second trial, April 1, 1835, the first mate of the steamboatUtility Judge Lawless insisted on the steamboat captain’s hired an enslaved young man, Dave, as a “hand on lack of liability. This time he stressed the ultimate board said boat.” The steamboat then crossed into outcome of Dave’s attempted escape rather than the increasingly free Illinois, where it stopped 30 miles defendant’s intent. Although Taylor had carried Dave upriver from St. Louis in Alton, Illinois, where Elijah to and from Illinois, his master soon recaptured and Lovejoy would be killed by an anti-abolitionist mob sold him. He had not permanently lost his slave or his

24 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 slave’s value. “It seems to the court,” Lawless wrote, “that it could not have been the intention of the legislature” to make a defendant like Taylor liable for the value of a transported slave “when that very slave was brought back to the state, and to the very county in which the plaintiff resides, and afterward actually sold by him.”57 Yet, upon a second hearing in 1838, the Missouri Supreme Court again reversed the Circuit Court’s opinion and asserted a strict interpretation of the statutory prohibition against transporting any slave across the Mississippi River without a written pass.58 Judge Mathias M’Girk stressed in his majority opinion that “the boy did not show any pass, nor did the defendant ask for any.”59 As M’Girk’s reasoning suggests, the court found the steamboat captain liable because his employee not only took Dave aboard but, more importantly, also failed to perform the basic diligence of asking for a pass. As the Missouri Supreme Court insisted, it was this action by the defendant’s employee, not whether Dave successfully escaped, that made the steamboat captain liable. During the next two decades, St. Louis judges and juries grappled with the question of how much of the financial risk inherent in hiring and transporting slaves, who escaped whenever possible, should be assumed by slaveholders and how much to assign common carriers. As Jenny Bourne Wahl’s analysis of appellate cases throughout the south reveals, at least until the deepening sectional crisis of the late 1840s, judges hesitated to hold common carriers strictly liable for slave escapes, a legal standard that could have limited masters’ ability to hire and transport slaves. As Wahl argues, the law instead served to make slavery economically efficient, a goal that did not benefit individual masters in all circumstances Corporal punishment of slaves, especially for escaping, but, as a whole, protected slaveholders’ ability to was not uncommon, as described and portrayed here in adapt the institution to industrial modes of work and Henry Bibb’s Narrative. (Image: Narrative of the Life and transportation, including the steamboat.60 Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Consistent with Wahl’s findings on the Himself, New York, 1849) slaveholding states as a whole, Missouri courts fugitive slaves for free persons. initially hesitated to impose a strict liability standard on steamboat owners and officers. Although Russell Toward a Strict Liability Standard v. Taylor sent a strong message that steamboat owners and crew should ask slaves to show a pass prior to Eaton v. Vaughan (1846), more than any other hiring or otherwise transporting them, fugitive slaves’ case, aligned Missouri with the strict liability ingenuity and determination sparked related, hotly standard emerging throughout the slaveholding contested questions. Was a common carrier liable states, especially in border states and those with if a fugitive slave displayed a convincingly forged interstate waterways conducive to slave escapes.61 pass or forged free papers? Or if they stowed away In his majority opinion, Missouri Supreme Court undetected? During the 1840s, Missouri judges judge William Scott upheld the Howard County strove to distinguish fugitive slaves from free African Circuit Court ruling against steamboat Captain Americans by assigning increasingly strict liability to Nathaniel J. Eaton, who had taken the slave Charles common carrier owners and operators who mistook aboard his steamboat two years earlier, believing

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 25 him to be free. As witnesses testified, on August 31, 1844, the steamboat Wappillo departed for St. Louis from Glasgow, a Missouri River port city in central Missouri’s slavery-dependent hemp and tobacco region. That morning a “mulatto man about 20 or 25 years of age” approached this steamboat when it stopped at the wharf in Boonville and asked the captain if “he could get a passage to St Louis.” Initially, Captain Eaton “did not reply to the boy,” the plaintiff’s witness John F. Nicholds recalled. Perhaps he was unwilling to assume the legal risk Henry Bibb (1815–1854) was born into slavery, escaped to of transporting an African American passenger, Canada, and became a noted abolitionist and author. He who could turn out to be a fugitive slave, and felt returned to Canada after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act that he owed Charles neither an explanation nor the of 1850 and began publishing The Voice of the Fugitive, courtesy of a reply. But Charles also knew, and was the first African American newspaper in Canada.(Image: therefore able to break, the rules of steamboat travel. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An “I supposed you would like to see my [free] papers,” American Slave, Written by Himself, New York, 1849) he said to Eaton, who sat with Nicholds in front of slave. Scott recognized that “slaves have volition” the boiler deck. Eaton “replied positively he would and “may impose themselves on others for free that very thing.” Charles handed him “some papers” men.” Missouri’s location as a border state made which Eaton “read and handed them” to Nicholds and it imperative that those common carrier owners asked him if the local officials’ signatures on them and operators “who treat them as such should do were genuine. Nicholds recognized the signature of it at their peril.” Scott’s opinion reflects the view Nathaniel Ford, clerk of the Howard County Court, that had emerged by this point that Illinois was a and told Eaton that “the signatures were genuine and free state, at best Missouri’s opposite and at worst that Ford was the clerk” of the court when this free 62 its enemy, “inhabited by many who are anxious, paper was issued. and leaving no stone unturned to deprive us of our Charles’ use of these free papers, which he took slaves.” Separated only by “a navigable stream” from a local free African American named Pompey from this hostile territory, Scott insisted that the law Spence, demonstrates that at least some enslaved should hold common carrier owners and operators in people always managed to outmaneuver the many Missouri and especially in St. Louis, “the city on our restrictions lawmakers placed on black mobility. frontier” with Illinois, to the “strictest diligence” in By acquiring a document bearing an official court ascertaining black passengers’ status.64 signature, something that Captain Eaton and Nicholds The legal repercussions of Eaton v. Vaughan assumed he could not have obtained on his own, were magnified by similar lawsuits.Eaton v. Vaughan Charles destabilized even this most respected legal emerged alongside at least thirteen cases in which “proof” of an African Americans’ legal status. By the slaveholders sued steamboat owners or operators time word of Charles’ escape reached Captain Eaton, in St. Louis for the escape of their slaves during Charles had successfully boarded another steamboat the late 1830s and the 1840s. In addition to Eaton in St. Louis. Although Charles’ master hired a Mr. v. Vaughan, five of these thirteen St. Louis cases Busan to travel to St. Louis “in search of the boy,” reached the Missouri Supreme Court.65 Together where he managed to get the St. Louis police captain with the legislature’s periodic expansion of statutory to assemble and read the advertisement for Charles regulations on black border crossing aboard common to all the “St Louis Police,” they failed to recapture 63 carriers, these cases sharpened the border by showing him. common carriers the potential danger in transporting At the same time, the Missouri Supreme any enslaved African American, whether or not the Court’s 1846 strict liability ruling in Eaton v. steamboat officer or crew member intended to aid Vaughan deterred many steamboat escapes. In sharp the slave’s escape and even if they believed that the contrast with Russell v. Taylor nine years earlier, African American passenger was free. which assigned no liability without intent to help Rather than suggest that border policing a slave escape, Judge William Scott declared that remained weak, the relatively small number of cases having believed an African American passenger that reached the St. Louis Circuit Court and Missouri or hired worker was free provided no defense Supreme Court suggests the case law’s effectiveness against liability if he or she proved to be a fugitive in putting captains and crews on guard against

26 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 slaves trying to escape across the Mississippi River. In his 1849 Narrative, Henry Bibb recalled of his escape through St. Louis, “I knew that the captain of a steamboat could not take a colored passenger on boat from a slave state without first ascertaining whether such person was bond or free; I knew that this was more than he would dare to do by the laws of the slave states.”66 As Bibb recognized, by penalizing those who transported slaves across the river, the law coerced perhaps indifferent or even antislavery steamboat captains, who otherwise might have “dared” to “take a colored passenger on boat This image of slaves being hunted down while escaping was from a slave state” without question, into policing one of many that appeared in Henry Bibb’s Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, the Mississippi River border. In some instances, Written by Himself, which first appeared in 1849. (Image: fear of legal liability similarly deputized steamboat Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An companies as agents of the state. As an abolitionist American Slave, Written by Himself, New York, 1849) minister, S.W. Dwinnell recalled in 1866, two decades earlier a steamboat company’s agent jails and state prisons, penal practices that protected pursued the “slave girl Caroline” to Milwaukee. the institution of slavery and fostered statemaking.69 Caroline had “walked boldly upon the deck of an up Mobilizing the newly built state penitentiary river steamer just as it was leaving” and, because her in an effort to prevent slave escapes, the 1835 “light yellow complexion” helped her to pass as free, Missouri legislature set a seven-year minimum no steamboat officer asked her to show a pass or free penitentiary sentence for “stealing a slave.”70 Trial papers. She then fled from Milwaukee to Canada, courts subsequently interpreted “slave stealing” as narrowly escaping the steamboat company’s agent.67 intentionally helping slaves escape across Missouri’s Like Caroline, William J. Anderson escaped up borders. The St. Louis Circuit Court alone convicted the Mississippi River only through a combination and sentenced dozens to the penitentiary for “slave of ingenuity, determination, and luck. He posed as a stealing.” Between 1837 and 1862, Missouri circuit valet carrying luggage in order to board a steamboat, courts convicted some forty-two people for this and, finally, jumped overboard, and swam to the “crime.”71 In his 1894 memoir, the Reverend Jordan Indiana shore after being detected as a fugitive slave. W. Early recalled his narrow evasion of a “slave Illustrating how thoroughly the law encouraged stealing” charge by the St. Louis Grand Jury in steamboat officers and crew to scrutinize all African 1846. As Early explained, “our [African Methodist Americans seeking passage, Anderson posed as an Episcopal] Church wherever established was called enslaved valet rather than a free man because, as he an abolition church, which made the slaveholders recalled in his 1857 Narrative, “for a colored man suspicious of its proceedings.” Through dissimulation to make an application up the [Mississippi] river on and feigned ignorance, the free black minister a boat without the voice of some white man, would managed to be released almost instantly. When be looked upon with astonishment, and a close the foreman of the grand jury asked what he knew examination would follow.”68 about the underground railroad, Early “asked him to As the Missouri Supreme Court’s denunciation explain what it was, for I never had seen a railroad of the “many who are anxious to deprive us of underground.” When asked what he would do if he our slaves” in Eaton v. Vaughan suggests, strict saw a slave running away, “I told him I would give legal liability for common carriers grew in tandem him a dollar and tell him to run with all his might! with Missouri lawmakers’ increasing surveillance The last answer seemed to amuse them, and finding and criminalization of abolitionist activity. In they could elicit nothing from me I was released.”72 particular, the establishment of Missouri’s first state Despite narrow escapes like Early’s, the legal penitentiary, opened in 1834, gave the state a new threat of the penitentiary loomed over him and all weapon for ferreting out abolitionists and others who wished to help slaves escape. As Early recalled, who intentionally aided slaves in escaping. Indeed, despite his skillful interaction with the Grand Jury, as scholars such as Taja-Nia Henderson have found, he “knew that I was in a critical condition, for if it the incarceration of fugitive slaves, and of slaves could be proven that any man assisted in the least condemned to sale and forced transportation, served one who was making his escape, the punishment as central functions of colonial and antebellum local would be very severe.”73 Indeed, these “very severe”

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 27 River border during the two decades following the Louisiana Purchase into a highly fortified and perilous one for all African Americans, both fugitive and free.

It is difficult for us to imagine today, but public executions were something of an event for some. In 1841, the Eagle advertised a one-day excursion from Alton, Illinois, to St. Louis to see four African Americans executed. (Image: The Illinois Reporter, December 12, 1826)

The ironically named Judge Luke Lawless ruled against trying any members of the mob that lynched Francis MacIntosh in 1836. MacIntosh was a free black who had been taken into custody by sheriffs, escaped, and was burned to death. Seeing his charred remains the next day converted Elijah Lovejoy into an abolitionist. (Image: Missouri History Museum)

punishments, including long penitentiary sentences, imbued Missouri’s river border with enormous legal danger and consequence for fugitive slaves and those who aided their escape. As this article has shown, Missouri legislators and judges increased common carrier owners’ and operators’ liability for transporting slaves across the river, shifting the bulk of the financial risk of slave escapes from slaveowners to common carriers. At the same time, African Americans, of course, bore the greatest risk of all, the risk of losing their freedom. Lawmakers’ efforts to tighten and police the Mississippi River border against slave escapes also put all African Americans at increased risk of arrest and enslavement as suspected fugitive slaves, whether enslaved or free. By the eve of the Civil War, Missouri judges and legislators had helped transform what had been a partially defined, porous Mississippi

28 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 Congratulations to Jesse Nasta the Recipient of the Jacqueline Tatom 2014 Emerging Scholar Best Paper Award

Jacqueline Tatom, an architect, urban designer, and teacher whose work explored the metropolitan landscapes of St. Louis and its environs.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Research Exchange. The Des Lee Collaborative Vision at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Washington University in St. Louis, and Lindenwood University sponsor an award for the best student paper on a case, issue, or topic relating to the St. Louis metropolitan area. The Award commemorates Jacqueline Tatom who explored the metropolitan landscapes of St. Louis as an architect, urban designer, and teacher. The Award is presented biannually, and published in The Confluence. This year, Jesse Nasta is the Tatom Award recipient; the article appears in this issue of The Confluence.

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 29 ENDNOTES

1 I would like to thank Dylan Penningroth and Kate Masur 9 According to the 1840 U.S. federal census, St. Louis’ for their thorough, thoughtful critiques of early drafts enslaved population still outnumbered free African of this piece. I am also very grateful to Mike Everman, Americans by a nearly 3:1 margin, with 1,531 slaves and Patricia Barge, and Diane Everman for their warm and 531 free African Americans enumerated in the city that enthusiastic support during several years of assistance year. By 1860, the city’s 1,755 free African Americans in finding obscure St. Louis sources. I also wish to outnumbered the 1,542 slaves. See Wade, Slavery in the thank the American Historical Association for an Albert Cities, 327. J. Beveridge Grant, the Missouri State Archives for a 10 For the text of this law, see Stephen Middleton, The William E. Foley Research Fellowship, the Illinois State Black Laws of the Old North: A Documentary History Historical Society for a King V. Hostick Scholarship, (Westport, : The Greenwood Press, 1993), and the Elgin, Illinois, Genealogical Society for a 185–88. Chester A. Bowser Scholarship, all of which provided 11 The “Act Concerning the Introduction of Negroes and support for my archival research. Mulattoes into this Territory,” passed by the Indiana Loren Schweninger, ed., From Tennessee Slave to Territory’s legislature in 1805, permitted any master St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James bringing slaves into Illinois to continue to hold them in Thomas (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, servitude, provided that they appear before the Court of 1984), 180. For more on James P. Thomas and his Common Pleas to “determine and agree to and with his family’s experience in slavery and freedom, see John or her negro or mulatto upon the terms of years which Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, In Search of the the said negro or mulatto will and shall serve his or her Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South (New said owner or possessor.” This law, not repealed until York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Illinois entered the Union in 1818, introduced what 2 I particularly draw upon Laura Edwards’ The People Paul Finkelman has called “de facto slavery” to Indiana and Their Peace here, about how the focus on state- Territory and Illinois Territory. Faced with no choice level law, printed legal texts, and legal professionals but to “agree” to a “term” of servitude in Illinois or masks the legal change that occurred during the first return to their place of origin as a slave for life, up to decades of the nineteenth century, especially local legal one thousand African Americans “agreed” to terms of contestation. See especially Edwards, The People and servitude that often exceeded their expected lifetimes, Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of or up to 99 years. For more on these indenture laws and Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (Chapel Hill: their effects, see Finkelman, “Slavery and the Northwest University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 3–25. On Ordinance: A Study in Ambiguity,” Journal of the Early the interaction between “legal rules” and contestation of Republic, No. 4 (Winter, 1986), 343–70. For the text those “rules,” see also Norma Basch, Framing American of this law, see Francis S. Philbrick, ed., The Laws of Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Indiana Territory, 1801–1809 (Springfield: Illinois State Victorians (Berkeley: University of Press, Historical Library, 1930), 136–39. 1999). 12 Middleton, Black Laws of the Old Northwest, 295–98. 3 “A Law Respecting Slaves,” in Laws of a Public and See especially section 5, section 6, and sections 21–25. General Nature, of the District of Louisiana, of the A more concise full text of the 1819 statute is reprinted Territory of Missouri, and of the State of Missouri, up to in Helen Cox Tregillis, compiler, River Roads to the Year 1824, In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 (Jefferson City, Freedom: Fugitive Slave Notices and Sheriff Notices Missouri: W. Lusk & Son, 1842), 27–33. Found in Illinois Sources (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage 4 Laws of a Public and General Nature, of the District of Books, Inc., 1988), 2–10. Louisiana, of the Territory of Louisiana, Vol. 1, 33. 13 Fugitive slave newspaper advertisements reveal that, 5 Maximilian Reichard, “Black and White on the Urban well into the 1840s, southern Illinois sheriffs and Frontier: The St. Louis Community in Transition, jailers continued to presume all African Americans to 1800–1830,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 33, be fugitive slaves unless proven free. For example, on No. 1 (Oct. 1976), 4. January 1, 1842, the sheriff of White County, Illinois, 6 For these population statistics, see Richard C. Wade, committed to jail “a negro man who calls himself Willis Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820–1860 (London, Wilson Thomas” although he “says he is a free man.” Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 327. See the Shawneetown, Illinois, Republican, January 15, 7 Rufus Babcock, Forty Years of Pioneer Life: Memoir 1842, as reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 94. of John Mason Peck, D.D., Edited From His Journals 14 The Kaskaskia, Illinois, Western Intelligencer, April and Correspondence (Philadelphia: American Baptist 14, 1819, as reprinted in Tregillis, comp, River Publication Society, 1864), 84, 90. Roads, 54. A brief notice in the Edwardsville, Illinois, 8 Diane Mutti Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Spectator reveals that this so-called “petty Lawyer” Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815–1865 (Athens: was Jonathan H. Pugh, a state representative from Bond University of Press, 2010), 309. County, Illinois, and an opponent of the 1824 Illinois

30 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 constitutional convention to legalize slavery in the state. declared all slavery and involuntary servitude illegal in See Edwardsville Spectator, March 15, 1823. Illinois. For more on French colonial slavery in Illinois 15 Here I draw upon Edwards, The People and Their and the long road to Jarrot v. Jarrot, see Newton N. Peace, to distinguish between legal “rights,” which Newborn, “Judicial Decision Making and the End Edwards is correct to critique because “rights” imply a of Slavery in Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois State legal uniformity, systematization, and accessibility that Historical Society 98, No. 1/2 (Spring-Summer 2005): did not exist in the early nineteenth century, neither for 7–33. masters like Wilcox nor, especially, for the enslaved. See 29 Letter from Governor Ninian Edwards to Mayor William Edwards, The People and Their Peace. Carr Lane, September 21, 1828, William Carr Lane 16 For analysis of fugitive slave newspaper advertisements Papers, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis. as a source, and of the prominence of the eastern 30 Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 43–44, 53. seaboard in studies of this source, see Shane White, 31 The Springfield, IllinoisSangamo Journal, July 12, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery 1832, reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 46–47. in New York City, 1770–1810 (Athens: University 32 Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri of Georgia Press, 1991), 114–49. Edward Baptist’s Frontier from Borderland to Border State (Bloomington: forthcoming, national database of fugitive slave Indiana University Press, 2006), xx–xxi. ads, however, should help to remedy this regional 33 Walter Johnson, “Inconsistency, Contradiction, and unevenness in analysis of fugitive slave advertisements. Complete Confusion: The Everyday Life of the Law of 17 Tregillis, comp., River Roads to Freedom. The twelve Slavery,” Law & Social Inquiry 22, No. 2 (Spring 1997): newspapers are: in Shawneetown, Illinois; The Illinois 405–33. Gazette, The Western Voice (later The Voice and 34 Laws of A Public and General Nature, of the District of Journal), The Republican, The Democrat, The Illinois Louisiana, Vol. 1, 990–91. Journal/Intelligencer; in Kaskaskia: The Western 35 “An Act directing the county courts to appoint patrolers Intelligencer; in Vandalia: The Illinois Intelligencer; [sic] and concerning slaves,” approved December 14, in Sparta, Illinois: The Randolph County Record and 1822, in Laws of A Public and General Nature, of the The Sparta Register; in Edwardsville: The Spectator; in District of Louisiana, Vol. 1, 990. Belleville: The Advocate. 36 The Shawneetown, Illinois, Gazette, August 12, 1820, 18 Kaskaskia, Illinois, Western Intelligencer, August 14, reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 18–19. 1816, as reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 51. 37 William J. Anderson, Life and Narrative of William J. 19 Shawneetown, Illinois, Gazette, February 24, 1820, as Anderson, Twenty-Four Years a Slave (: Daily reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 16. Tribune and Job Printing Office, 1857), 17, 31–36. 20 The Kaskaskia, Illinois Western Intelligencer, July 24, 39 Thomas C. Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: 1816, as reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Mississippi Steamboat 50–51. World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 21 Shawneetown, Illinois Gazette, August 23, 1821, Press, 2004), 9. Buchanan acknowledges that some as reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 26; fugitives in St. Louis had “fled enslavement thinly Shawneetown, Illinois Gazette, March 1, 1823, as veiled as indentured servitude in southern Illinois,” reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 37. but, otherwise, he examines how steamboats facilitated 22 This calculation is based on all fugitive slave escape from the slave to free states, not how slaves’ advertisements reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River hitherto multidirectional escape routes came to be Roads. consolidated in a northward direction. See Buchanan, 23 Shawneetown, Illinois Gazette, November 16, 1822, as Black Life on the Mississippi, especially chapter 4. reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 36. For antebellum travel times from St. Louis by stage, 24 Ibid., February 23, 1822, reprinted in Tregillis, comp., wagon, and steamboat, see Timothy R. Mahoney, River River Roads, 29. Towns in the Great West: The Structure of Provincial 25 Ibid., November 7, 1829, reprinted in Tregillis, comp., Urbanization in the American Midwest, 1820–1870 River Roads, 89. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 26 Kaskaskia, Illinois Western Intelligencer, June 9, 1819, especially chapter 5. reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 55. 39 Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi, 9–11. 27 Shawneetown, Illinois Gazette, March 13, 1823, 40 Wade, Slavery in the Cities, 15–16. reprinted in Tregillis, comp., River Roads, 37–38. 41 The Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri (St. Louis: 28 Illinois courts insisted that the Northwest Ordinance The Argus Office, 1835), 586. failed to apply to those held as slaves in Illinois during 42 See, for example, Stanley Harrold, Border War: the French colonial period, prior to the Northwest Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: Ordinance, and their descendants, some of whom University of North Carolina Press, 2010). remained enslaved in Illinois well into the nineteenth 43 Merton L. Dillon found no antislavery societies in the century. The last of these Illinois “French slaves,” as state outside of south central Illinois’s Putnam County, they were called, finally gained freedom in 1845, when heavily populated by antislavery Presbyterians, until the Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion in Jarrot v. Jarrot 1836. See Merton L. Dillon, “Abolitionism Comes to

Spring/Summer 2017 | The Confluence | 31 Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 56 Ibid. 53, No. 4 (Winter 1960): 389–403. 57 Ibid. 44 St. Louis Republican, “Abolitionist Movements,” as 58 Ibid. reprinted in The Liberator, December 14, 1849, 199. 59 Ibid. 45 The New York Emancipator, October 22, 1845. 60 Jenny Bourne Wahl, The Bondsman’s Burden: An 46 “A Memorial to Congress Concerning Fugitive Slaves,” Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern January 25, 1847, in Laws of the State of Missouri, Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Passed at the First Session of the Fourteenth General 1998). Assembly, Begun and Held at the City of Jefferson, 61 Wahl, The Bondsman’s Burden, especially chapter 4. On Monday, the Sixteenth Day of November, Eighteen 62 Eaton v. Vaughan, January Term 1846, Case Number Hundred and Forty-Six, and Ended on Tuesday, the 18, Missouri Supreme Court Case Files, Missouri State Sixteenth Day of February, Eighteen Hundred and Archives-Jefferson City. Forty-Seven (Jefferson City, Missouri: James Lusk- 63 Ibid. Public Printer, 1847), 360. 64 Ibid. 47 The St. Louis Republican, as reprinted in The Ohio 65 Calvert v. Steamboat Timileon, St. Louis Circuit Court, Observer, September 27, 1854. November Term 1849, Case # 181; Finney v. Kinder, 48 See Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, America’s First Black St. Louis Circuit Court, March Term 1842, Case # 113, Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830–1915 (Urbana: Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; Harper v. Steamboat University of Illinois Press, 2000), especially chapters 1 Western Belle, St. Louis Circuit Court, November Term and 2. 1844, Case # 81, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; 49 Since at least the publication of Larry Gara’s classic Hudson v. Miller, St. Louis Circuit Court, November 1961 study of the underground railroad, historians Term 1849, Case # 127, Missouri State Archives-St. have stressed the central role that African Americans Louis; Jones v. Steamboat Prairie Bird, April Term themselves played in aiding fugitive slaves. See Larry 1847, Case # 141, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Lee v. McCune, Deane, Randolph, Whitney, Hazard, Railroad (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, Carson, and Voorhles, owners of the Steamboat Edward 1961). More recently, Keith Griffler has shown that Bates, November Term 1848, Case # 189 and 190, free African American communities along the Ohio Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; Walker and Hundley River border did not merely play an important part in v. Von Phul, et.al., St. Louis Circuit Court, April Term the underground railroad but in fact spearheaded this 1844, Case # 146, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; on-the-ground struggle against slavery. See P. Griffler, Wilkinson v. Baldwin, St. Louis Circuit Court, July Term Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the 1840, Case # 195, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley Price v. Thornton, St. Louis Circuit Court, July Term (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). 1841, Case # 50, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; 50 John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Price v. Tatum, St. Louis Circuit Court, July Term 1841, Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Case # 50, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; Lepper v. Slave, Now In England (London, 1855), 151–52. Chilton, St. Louis Circuit Court, September Term 1841, 51 For more on this mail campaign, see Bertram Wyatt- Missouri State Archives-St. Louis; Chouteau v. Keizer Brown, “The Abolitionists’ Postal Campaign of 1835,” and Hope, St. Louis Circuit Court, Missouri Supreme Journal of Negro History, 50, No. 4 (October 1965): Court-St. Louis; Horrell v. Fithian, master of the 227–38. Steamboat Boreas, St. Louis Circuit Court, November 52 The Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri, 586. Term 1843, Case # 23, Missouri State Archives-St. 53 Laws of A Public and General Nature, of the District of Louis; Perry and Van Houten v. Beardslee, St. Louis Louisiana, 748. Circuit Court, April Term 1844, Case # 16, Missouri 54 This information on Russell is pieced together from the State Archives-St. Louis; Sarade v. Steamboat Bowling following sources: Laws of the State of Missouri, Passed Green, St. Louis Circuit Court, November Term 1842, at the First Session of the Eleventh General Assembly Case # 47, Missouri State Archives-St. Louis. (Jefferson City, Missouri: Jeffersonian Office, 1841), 66 Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of 253; Laws of the State of Missouri, Passed at the First Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly, 206; St. (New York: Published by the Author, 1849), 166. Louis County Court Record Book, Vol. 1, 1824–1835, 67 Rev. S.A. Dwinnell, Wisconsin As It Was and As It Is. 287, 285, 297, 363; St. Louis County Court Record 1836 Compared With 1866. Its Material, Educational, Book, Vol. 2, 1836–1841, 75, 97, 383; St. Louis County and Religious History (Milwaukee: Godfrey & Court Record Book, Vol. 3, 1841–1844, 22, 43, 59, 66, Crandall’s Steam Printing House, 1866), 15–18. 84, 85, 86. Russell reported owning fourteen slaves on 68 Anderson, Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, the 1840 federal census, St. Louis. 31–36. 55 Russell v. Taylor, June Term 1837, Case Number 17, 69 Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, “Crucibles of Discontent: Penal Missouri Supreme Court Case Files, Missouri State Practice in the Shadow of Slavery, , 1796–1865” Archives-Jefferson City. (Ph.D. Diss., New York University, 2013).

32 | The Confluence | Spring/Summer 2017 70 The Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri, 177–78. Early, one of the Pioneers of African Methodism in the 71 Harriet C. Frazier, Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves West and South (orig. pub. 1894; reprint, Freeport, New and Those Who Helped Them, 1763–1865 (Jefferson, York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 37–39. North Carolina: McFarland, 2010), 131. 73 Early, Life and Labor of Rev. Jordan W. Early, 38. 72 Sarah J.W. Early, Life and Labor of Rev. Jordan W.

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